Be Careful When Diagnosing Your Ailments Online

alkieanon's picture
Submitted by alkieanon on Thu, 08/09/2012 - 19:30

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Be careful when diagnosing your ailments online: When I was a child, a pale specter used to call our house most evenings, eager to chat with my doctor father about her myriad medical concerns. We called her the "White Bread Lady," a moniker she earned for one particularly inane call in which she panicked to my father after consuming white bread. She wasn't breaking out in hives or having any adverse effects to the bread. No, she was just concerned that some future illness could befall her given that one particular dietary decision. Although we all laughed at the time, it was with a bit of shifty-eyed shame. Because most of us (including if not particularly the illustrious Ehrlich family) have lurking within us our very own "White Bread Lady," ready to convince us that each cough, sniffle and less-than-nutritious meal might be a detriment to our health. And, naturally, that White Bread Lady looms even larger when we can type our worries into a search bar and unlock a bevy of potentially distressing information. Yup, so quoth Google, we all have cancer.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/08/tech/social-media/netiquette-online-diagno...

alkieanon's picture

alkieanon

Thu, 08/09/2012 - 19:31

Be careful when researching advice from OP or OPF. LOL!

disclosure

Thu, 08/09/2012 - 20:05

AA has a 20 questions pamphlet that you fill out to self diagnose yourself as an alcoholic. The pamphlet called 20 questions was designed by someone at Johns Hopkins as an aid to help determine if you had a problem with alcohol.
http://www.a-1associates.com/aa/INFO%20LIST/20Questions.htm

From a contact from Johns Hopkins' media relations department:

"The Johns Hopkins Twenty Questions: Are You An Alcoholic? was developed in the 1930s by Dr. Robert Seliger, who at that time was a faculty member in the Department of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. It was intended for use as a self-assessment questionnaire to determine the extent of one's alcohol use. It was not intended to be used by professionals as a screening tool to help them formulate a diagnosis of alcoholism in their patients. We do not use this questionnaire at any of the Johns Hopkins substance abuse treatment programs. To the best of my knowledge, there have never been any reliable or validated studies conducted using the Hopkins Twenty Questions. I advise you to consider using other instruments such as the Michigan Alcoholism Screening Test or the CAGE — both of which have proven reliability and validity as reported in the scientific literature."

So, the questions should be attributed to Dr. Robert Seliger of Johns Hopkins (in the 1930s), not to Johns Hopkins itself as they no longer advocate their use. I note as well that the e-mail I sent to you all earlier from the Literature Desk at GSO stated that the hospital had requested that GSO not attribute those questions to their institution in the pamphlet "Memo to an Inmate Who May Be an Alcoholic."

If you know anyone who would like permission to reprint this piece, I have a contact at Johns Hopkins to whom I can refer them. I have been in contact with the faculty member who knew the history of this document and who recommended that we not use it. She was very adamant about it--in a second e-mail to me, she said that she'd grant permission to any AA group who wanted to use it, but that she really recommended that we don't.

alkieanon's picture

alkieanon

Thu, 08/09/2012 - 21:19

Still in use today or a historical artifact?